Features of Students’ Physical Development in the Process of Physical Education

Nowadays, scientists, researchers and practitioners of physical education and sports note a steady increase in the number of students with physical health disabilities, disorders of the locomotor apparatus, low level of physical fitness because of the environmental problems, poor quality food, and, what is of utmost importance, the decrease in the level of their motor activity. The physical development of student youth is a marker that indirectly characterizes the physical fitness and level of physical health of students. It is closely connected with the process of their organism forming. Even the visual assessment of the student's body structure gives the researcher an opportunity to approximately determine his/her somatotype, to characterize the level of their motor abilities development, the ratio of the body length and weight, the presence of fatty deposits, the proportionality of body sizes. The systematic analysis of the domestic theory and practice of physical education of different groups of the population indicates that the body structure is one of the characteristics of physical development, which gives the objective understanding of the spatial organization of the morphological components of the human body, the proportions, and constitutional features of the body. According to current attainments, the body structure has distinct sexual, age and individual characteristics, and in terms of the system organization can be regarded as an interrelated and interdependent set of morphofunctional components of the human body. Unfortunately, the researchers state the delay in the physical development of student youth and the increasing of the proportion of students who, due to their state of health, belong to special medical groups in the process of their education in higher education establishments. The purpose of the study was to determine the peculiarities of the physical development of students of the 1-4 years of study at the higher educational establishments with a regard to the type of their body structure in the process of physical education. Material and methods. We used the methods of scientific and methodical literature analysis; pedagogical observation; anthropometry; pedagogical experiment; methods of mathematical statistics. 208 students took part in the research, which was carried out on the basis of the Halytska academy, namely 41 freshmen, 51 sophomores, 63 undergraduates and 53 graduates. Results and discussion. The results of the anthropometric researches received during the pedagogical experiment were processed by statistical methods. The participants of the experiment were distributed according to the body structure in accordance with the PignetIndex. Based on the PignetIndex, the participants in the experiment were divided into students with ectomorphic, mesomorphic, and endomorphic types of body structures. Thus, 16.35% were assigned to the ectomorphic type, 62.02% – to the mesomorphic group, and 21.63% of the surveyed – to the endomorphic type.